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AN 

ADDRESS 

DELIVERED AT THE REQUEST 

OF THE 

CITIZENS OF HARTFORD, 

ON THE 

9th of NOVEMBER, 1835. 
THE CLOSE 



OF 



THE SECOND CENTURY, 



FROM THE 



FIRST SETTLEMENT OF THE CITY. 



By JOEL HAWES, D. D. 

PASTOR OF THE FIRs''}' CHURCH IN H A R T F R ff'P'^.?*/"- 



HARTFORD, 

BELKNAP & HAMERSLEY. 

18 3 5, 



HARTFORD, Nov 10th, 1835. 
Rev. Dr. HA WES, 
Dear Sir, 

The undersigned, a Committee appointed by the 
Citizens of the Town of Hartford, to superintend the 
Centennial Celebration of the 9th inst., respectfully re- 
quest a copy of the very appropriate and acceptable ad- 
dress, delivered by you upon the occasion, in order that 
the same may be published, for the eye of the public. 

We have the honor to be, 

Sir, very respectfully, your obedient servants, 

CYPRIAN NICHOLS, 
JOSEPH TRUMBULL, 
JARED GRISWOLD, 
RODERICK TERRY, 

D. F. ROBINSON, 
ALBERT DAY, 

E. W. BULL. 



ADDRESS 



How changed is the scene around us, 
from what our fathers beheld, when, two 
hundred years ago, they came and fixed 
here the place of their habitation and be- 
gan the settlement of our state ? The 
river that skirts our city rolls on in its ac- 
customed channel ; the hills and the valleys 
remain, and the general aspect of nature. 
But all else, how changed ! The dark, 
unbroken forests have disappeared ; the 
wild beasts that roamed those forests are 
gone ; and the numerous tribes of Indians 
that inhabited these hills and valleys, and 
kindled here their council fires and shouted 
the war song, have passed away and are 
gone like the leaves of their native woods. 



b CENTENNIAL 

Where, two centuries ago, naught was 
to be seen but a '' w aste, howling wilder- 
ness," we now behold flourishing towns 
and villages, the busy mart, and the crowd- 
ed city, with all the accompaniments of a 
free, enlightened and Christian population. 
Instead of a wide, barren desert, we be- 
hold cultivated fields and smiling gardens ; 
instead of savage tribes, we behold com- 
munities of civilized men ; instead of the 
murky Indian hut, we behold comfortable 
houses and splendid public edifices ; instead 
of the Indian canoe, silently darting along 
our river, in pursuit of the beaver and the 
otter, we behold the steamboat and the 
ship, proudly floating on its bosom, laden 
with the products of every clime ; instead 
of the warwhoop and the cry of savage cru- 
elty, we hear, on every side, the voice of 
peace and of comfort, and listen to the 
song of thanksgiving and praise, ascending 
from thousands of grateful hearts to the 
throne of the living God. We are not met, 
as were our fathers in 1635, in fear and 
want and gloomy bodings, to oflfer our w^or- 



ADDRESS. 7 

ship under the spreading trees of the wood, 
beneath a wintry sky. The armed men, ap- 
pointed to guard the place of their meeting 
against the attack of savages, are not here. 
We are met in the enjoyment of peace and 
plenty and bright visions of the future ; in 
the temple of Jehovah ; surrounded with all 
that makes society sweet and life happy. 
We are not few and feeble and defenceless, 
as they were, dw^elling alone in a vast wil- 
derness, and separated by the distance of 
an hundred miles of trackless forests, from 
every abode of civilized man. The three 
little towns that were planted on our river 
in 1635, have been multiplied to one hun- 
dred and thirty-three. The little company 
of weary exiles, that came here, and with 
infinite toil and suffering, felled the forests 
and cleared the fields, and laid the founda- 
tions of our state, have been augmented to 
three hundred thousand, forming a constitu- 
ent and happy part of a great nation, — a 
nation of more than twelve millions of 
people, blessed with intelligence, with lib- 
erty, with religion and general happiness 
beyond any other nation on earth. 



8 CENTENNIAL 

When we contemplate this scene and 
survey the mighty changes that have taken 
place within the period referred to, we are 
instinctively prompted to inquire for the 
cause. We wish to trace back to their 
source, those events which we feel have 
had so important an influence in mould- 
ing our destiny and deciding the condition 
in which we are to pass the brief period 
alloted us on earth. We feel an interest 
to know who were the agents in effecting 
this mighty transformation ; what motives 
brought them to this field of their toils ; 
what principles guided them in laying the 
foundation of those civil and religious insti- 
tutions which distinguish our lot ; what 
fortunes attended them during their sojourn 
on earth ; how they lived, how they died 
and where is the place of their graves. 
Our interest is greatly increased in the in- 
quiry, when we learn that the men, from 
whom we have received our goodly heri- 
tage, were our fathers, our own venerated 
ancestors ; that their blood runs in our veins; 
that we hear and repeat their names, eve- 



ADDRESS. y 

ry day, in the greetings of social inter- 
course ; that they still live in the midst of 
us, in their descendants, our own relatives 
and neighbors and friends. Who is there 
that claims, even a distant connection w^ith 
the fathers of our city and state ; or who, 
that only shares in the common blessings 
which have resulted from their virtues and 
their toils, but must feel an interest to know 
something of their character and history, 
and by what means they laid so deep and 
strong the foundations of our strength and 
glory 1 

It is right, then, fellow citizens, that by 
public meeting and proper observances, we 
should celebrate the memorable era of the 
settlement of our city. It is a service 
which we owe to the memory of men to 
whom under God, we cannot but feel, 
that we are indebted for the best and 
most valued blessings of our condition. 
It is a service which we owe to ourselves, 
as it is adapted to cherish in us that rev- 
erence and affection which are due to ben- 
efactors ; to excite in us the love and 



10 CENTENNIAL 

the imitation of their virtues and to lead us 
to a grateful recognition of that wise and 
beneficent providence, which so kindly- 
watched over their destiny and ours. It is 
a service which we owe to our children and 
to those Avho shall come after us, as it is 
fitted to show them the estimation in which 
we hold the blessings transmitted to us by 
our fathers ; and the concern we feel that 
these blessings should continue to be prized 
and preserved by them, and handed down, 
in all their integrity and excellence, to the 
latest posterity. 

It is fit then, I repeat it, that we conse- 
crate this day to the memory of our fa- 
thers. And here, in the enjoyment of insti- 
tutions, planned by their wisdom ; in the 
possession of fields, subdued by their care, 
and of a territory defended by their valor 
and their blood ; happy in a rich and most 
abundant heritage of blessings, — all to a 
greater extent than probably any of us are 
aware, the fruit of their counsels, and la- 
bors, and prayers ; we are met to perform 
the meet service of recollecting the virtues. 



ADDRESS. 11 

and recounting the toils, the suflferings and 
achievements, of the venerated men, who, 
on the 9th of Nov. 1635,^ took possession 
of these gromids and consecrated them for- 
ever to virtue, to knowledge, to liberty and 
religion. We are assembled near the spot, 
where they first pitched their tents, and 
first raised their voice in prayer and praise. 
We can trace out the places where many 
of them lived. With a slight effort of im- 
agination, we can see them, after a weari- 
some journey of fourteen days in the wil- 
derness, arrived on the banks of the river 
and laboriously transporting themselves 
with their little ones to the opposite shore. 
We behold them, with slow and anxious 
step, winding their way among the trees in 
search of a suitable place for their habi- 
tations. We see them measuring off their 
lots, and erecting their rude cabins, along 
the banks of the little river, which was the 
part of the town first settled. We follow 
them through all their toils, their dangers, 

*Appendix. A, 



12 CENTENNIAL 

their triumphs, till we see them gathered to 
the resting place of the dead. Their sep- 
ulchres are with us. The mortal remains 
of the founders of our city are beneath and 
around us. We tread among their graves ; 
we read their epitaphs on the moss-grown 
stones that mark the place of their burial. 
But their works have erected for them the no- 
blest and most enduring monument. These 
shall never be forgotten. They are engra- 
ven on the deep foundations of our social 
fabric. They are inwrought into the very 
texture and being of our institutions ; and 
shall be held in grateful remembrance, so 
long as intelligence and virtue, as freedom 
and religion are esteemed of any worth in 
our world. 

It will be expected, on the present occa- 
sion, that I should present a brief sketch of 
the settlement of this town, of the charac- 
ter of the men who conducted the enter- 
prise ; of their principles and doings, with 
their results ; and of the leading events con- 
nected with our early history. 

More than a hundred years had passed 



ADDRESS. 13 

away, after the Cabots, under a commis- 
sion from Henry VII. had discovered the 
northern continent of North America, be- 
fore any permanent settlement was made in 
the country. Adventurers had at different 
times visited the coast from motives of curi- 
osity or of trade ; and here and there, an at- 
tempt had been made to found colonies ; but 
they were soon abandoned or were destroy- 
ed by the natives. That wise providence 
which directs the affairs of nations and of 
men, had destined this land to be the asy- 
lum of oppressed piety and liberty of con- 
science, and therefore denied its coloniza- 
tion to those who attempted it from motives 
of worldly gain. England was not allow- 
ed to occupy the country she had discover- 
ed, till the moral and religious advance- 
ment which her people were to undergo, had 
qualified her to become the parent of North 
America. That time had now come. In 
the midst of persecution and in an iron age, 
a society of men had risen up in Great Bri- 
tain, who, in the spirit of intelligence and 
piety and lofty enterprise, were prepared 



14 CENTENNIAL 

to become the founders of a great nation. 
They were called Puritans ; a name of re- 
proach in their day; but a name which 
every New Englander should be proud to 
read in the line of his ancestors. They 
had been trained in the school of ad- 
versity. They had studied the rights of 
Christians and of men, in exile and in pris- 
on, and were ready to suffer and die in de- 
fence of them. Deprived in their native 
land, of what is most valued by freemen, 
and most revered by protestants, the right 
of worshipping God according to the rules 
of his word and the dictates of conscience, 
they turned their eyes towards this land 
and sought here a refuge from the oppres- 
sions of an odious civil and ecclesiastical 
despotism. " The sun," they said, '' shines 
as pleasantly on America, as on England, 
and the sun of righteousness, much more 
clearly. We are treated here in a manner 
which forfeits all claim upon our affection. 
Let us remove, whither the providence of 
God calls, and make that our country 
which is dearer than property or life, the 



ADDRESS. 15 

liberty of worshipping God in the way, 
which appears to us most conducive to 
our eternal w^ell being." Not that our fa- 
thers were hostile to the established church 
of England, either in her worship or doc- 
trines, as taught in her Thirty-Nine Arti- 
cles. They clung to her with filial attach- 
ment, amid sufferings and wrongs, at the 
recital of which, the heart sickens. They 
parted from her ^' with much sadness of 
heart and many tears," and, on leaving 
the country, pledged their affectionate re- 
membrance of her, in their prayers to God, 
" for her welfare and the enlargement of 
her bounds in the kingdom of Christ."^ But 
the intolerant James had said in his star 
chamber, '' let not Puritans be tolerated." 
The High Commission Court '' trampled 
on their rights and their consciences." 
They were compelled to observe forms and 
ceremonies which they sincerely believed 
to be unscriptural and the relics of popery. 
They were forbidden to meet together to 

* 1. Hutchinson, 432, 



16 CENTENNIAL 

worship God, except at set times and ac- 
cording to prescribed forms ; and they were 
ordered, by royal and prelatical authority, 
to encourage the profanation of the Sab- 
bath, by publishing Sunday sports from 
their pulpits.* These things they bore till 
they became insupportable, and their only 
hope of relief was emigration to a foreign 
land. 

The pilgrims of Plymouth led the w^ay. 
After having sought and found, for a sea- 
son, a home in Holland, they resolved upon 
coming to America, hoping, as they said, 
" that they should lay some foundation, or 
make way for propagating the kingdom of 
Christ to the remote ends of the earth ; 
though they should be only as stepping 
stones to others." With this view, they 
embarked their earthly all on board the 
Mayflower, a small vessel of one hundred 
and twenty tons, and in 1620, landed, one 
hundred and one souls of them, on the 
shores of Plymouth. As this was the first 

♦ Neal's Hist, of the Puritans, vol. 3 : 265—9. 



ADDRESS. 17 

colony planted in New-England, and in- 
deed, the motive and model of all that fol- 
lowed, it deserves something more than a 
passing notice. 

To the eye of philosophy, the landing on 
the rocky, sterile soil of Plymouth, of a few 
outcast and despised exiles, was an event 
of little importance. Indeed, poor, friend- 
less, unprotected, as they were ; cast amid 
the rigors of a northern winter, upon a cold, 
rocky, barren, uninhabited shore ; sickness 
and death beginning immediately to thin 
their ranks, and, before the opening of the 
next spring, laying nearly one half of their 
number in the grave ; on every principle 
of human calculation, the speedy extinc- 
tion of the colony would have been pre- 
dicted with entire certainty. But open the 
page of history and point me if you can to 
an event of more importance to the race of 
man, than was the arrival of the pilgrims 
at Plymouth, on the 22d of December, 
1620. It was one of those events which 
form an epoch in the history of the world. 
It laid the foundation of a new state of so- 



18 CENTENNIAL 

ciety ; of new laws, new governments, new 
forms of worship, — of a great, prosperous 
and growing republic, — itself destined to 
be the origin of other republics and the re- 
former of other nations. We are accus- 
tomed to look to the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, as the charter of our freedom. 
My friends, w^e must look farther back for 
that charter. The spirit of it was in the 
bosoms of the pilgrims ; and before they 
left the little bark, that had borne them 
across the ocean, they embodied it, in a 
written, social compact, by which they con- 
stituted themselves a ' civil body politic,' 
and adopted as the basis of their union, the 
great principle, that the majority should go- 
vern. Here is brought out the grand idea 
of a free, elective government. The ap- 
plication of this principle was, at that day, 
but imperfectly understood. But the prin- 
ciple itself was fully recognized ; and it 
was earnestly cherished and manfully de- 
fended by the colonists, in many a long 
and severe contest with the mother coun- 
try, till it led to the war of the revolution 



ADDRESS* 19 

and was incorporated in the great instru- 
ment of our national union. May it live 
there forever. 

Let us then be just to the memory of the 
pilgrims. They set the example of coloni- 
zing New-England, and formed the mould 
for the civil and religious character of its in- 
stitutions.^ Indeed, but for the success of 
this colony, begun and sustained in the 
spirit of religion and of freedom, it may be 
doubted, as Hutchinsonj suggests, whether 
for a century after, Britain would have had 
any colonies in America. Repeated at- 
tempts had been made to establish colo- 
nies, but with uniform disaster and failure. 
The infant colony in Virginia was in an ex- 
piring condition, but was revived, in conse- 
quence of the success of the settlement at 
Plymouth. The pilgrims were destined, 
in the purpose of God, to be pioneers in the 
great work of planting in this country the 
seminal principles of republican freedom 
and national independence. That work 

* Bancroft's History of the United States, 439, t I. Vol. 11. 



20 CENTENNIAL 

they nobly accomplished ; and well was it 
said by one of their number, the excellent 
Bradford, — " Out of small beginnings great 
things have been produced ; and as one 
small candle may light a thousand, so the 
light here kindled hath shone to many, yea, 
in some sort, to over whole nations." That 
light brought over Endicott and his compa- 
ny to settle at Salem in 1628 ; and Winthrop 
and his company to settle Charlestown and 
Boston, in 1630. Both these colonies took 
counsel of their neighbors at Plymouth in 
the establishment of their civil and ecclesi- 
astical polity, and professed to be greatly 
influenced by their example. The fathers 
of Connecticut came from Massachusetts, 
and derived from them the essential princi- 
ples of our free and happy institutions. 
Thus, as the children of Israel traced to the 
rock in Horeb, the stream that followed 
and refreshed them in the wilderness, so 
do we trace to the rock of the pilgrims, as 
to a deep spring-head, the civil and reli- 
gious blessings which distinguish our state 
and country. 



ADDRESS. 21 

The first settlers of this town were a 
choice company of emigrants, gathered 
from among the most valued citizens and 
oldest churches of Massachusetts. Several 
of them were persons of education and 
wealth, and had lived in affluence and ease 
in their native land. They were originally 
from Braintree, and its vicinity ; a village 
in the county of Essex in England. They 
arrived in this country in 1632 ; and first 
settled at Mount Wollaston, now Q^uincy, 
near Boston.* But in the course of the 
year, " by order of court," they removed 
to Newtown, now Cambridge. There, in 
1633, the church was gathered, — the eighth 
in the country, — which statedly worships 
in this house ; and the Rev. Messrs. Hook- 
er and Stone, became their pastor and teach- 
er. Soon the question, respecting a remo- 
val to some more commodious place began 
to be agitated. The colonists complained 
that they were straitened for room, and 

* Holme's Hist, of Cambridge in Mass. Hist. Coll. vol. 7—10^ 
1 Winthrop, 89. 



22 CENTENNIAL 

could not receive those of their friends who 
might wish to join them from England. 
This has appeared to some a very improb- 
able reason for removal ; and it has been 
thought, that a better one has been found 
in the jealousy, which, it is gravely pre- 
sumed, Mr. Hooker must have felt, in rela- 
tion to the growing influence of Mr. Cot- 
ton. But jealousy was not a passion that 
could dwell in the humble and holy breast 
of Hooker, or be generated by such influ- 
ence as the meek and pious Cotton was 
formed to exert. These two eminent ser- 
vants of Christ, the fathers of the New- 
England churches, were warmly attached 
friends ; nor does it appear that any thing 
ever occurred to interrupt the affection and 
confidence which, it is known they entertain- 
ed for each other both before and after their 
arrival in the country.* Nor will it seem 
strange to us that the early settlers should 
so soon feel the inconveniences of a strai4:- 

*NoteC. 



ADDRESS. 23 

ened territory, when it is considered, that 
they generally had their farms in common, 
that they depended much on the interval 
and cleared lands in their neighborhood ; 
that they were unacquainted with the best 
modes of cultivation ; and, especially, that 
they were obliged to live near together, in 
compact villages, as a defence against the 
Indians. 

Be this as it may, the purpose of the peo- 
ple at Newtown, to remove was fixed ; and 
in the summer of 1634, six men from the 
" towns in the Bay" were dispatched to 
examine the lands on the Connecticut, then 
called the fresh river ; " who," in the quaint 
language of Hubbard, ''returning from this 
Eschol, with a large commendation of the 
commodiousness of the place and fruitful- 
ness of the soil, they took up a resolution 
forthwith to begin several plantations 
there. "^ 



* Hubbard's Hist, of New England, vol. II. 306. 



24 CENTENNIAL 

Previous to this, however, in the autumn 
of 1633, the Plymouth company had built 
a trading house near the mouth of the Far- 
mington river in Windsor. And about the 
same time the " Dutch intruders" had 
erected vvdiat they called the ^' hirse of good 
hope," on an elevation of ground just over 
the little river, and also a fort, near the 
junction of this, with the great river, by 
which they intended to defend themselves 
in the possession of the country. Neither 
of these establishments continued more 
than a few years. The first was soon 
purchased by the settlers of Windsor, and 
the occupants of the latter were ere long 
driven off.* 

After much delay in obtaining permission 
of the General Court of Massachusetts to 
remove, the colonists, collected from the 

* Aftei- the Dutch relinquished their settlement, all the lands 
were in 1653 confiscated by vii'tue of a commission from the Com- 
monwealth of England to Captain Underhill and sold. A point 
of land which fonned part of their possessions, is still called the 
Dutch point. Mass. Hist. Coll. vol. 3. p. 6. 



ADDRESS. 25 

three settlements of Dorchester, Newtown 
and Watertown, commenced their journey.* 
Never before had the forests of America 
witnessed such a scene, — a company of pil- 
grims, men, women and children, penetra- 
ting into the heart of a wilderness, which, 
hitherto, had echoed only to the war- 
whoop of the savage and the cry of wild 
beasts. They had to make their way over 
hills and valleys, and across rivers and 
swamps, with nothing to guide them but a 
compass, and nothing to cover them but 
the clear, cold skies of Autumn. Methinks 
I see them now, and hear the rustling of 
their footsteps among the fallen leaves of 
the season, as they journey forward through 
the tangled woods, seeking this, as a home 
for themselves and their little ones. Scarce- 
ly have they reached the place of their des- 
tination, ere the winter is upon them in 
great severity. Before they could provide 
shelters to protect them from the cold and 

* Note D. 



26 CENTENNIAL 

storms of the season, the ground was covered 
with snow and the river closed with ice.* 
The vessels, in Avhich they had embarked 
their furniture and their provisions, had ei- 
ther been wrecked on the coast, or were fro- 
zen in at the mouth of the river. Soon famine 
begins to stare them in the face ; and to 
save their lives, the greater part of the set- 
tlers are obliged, in the depth of winter, to 
make their way through the wilderness, or 
around the coast by water, to Massachu- 
setts. The sufferings of the few that re- 
mained were extreme. The winter was 
one of great severity ; '^ and after all they 
could obtain by hunting and from the In- 
dians, they were obliged to subsist on 
acorns, malt and grains."! 

With the opening of the spring, the emi- 
grants began to return to their habitations 
on the river. On the first of June, Thomas 
Hooker, justly styled by the author of Mag- 
nalia, '' the light of the western churches," 

* This was in sixteen days after their arrival, t Trumbull, p. 63. 



ADDRESS. 



27 



took his departure from Newtown, leading 
on, through the wilderness, his entire flock, 
consisting of about one hundred souls. Af- 
ter a fortnight's travel through the untrod- 
den forests, subsisting, by the way, on the 
milk of the kine which they drove before 
them, they reached the Connecticut, near 
the mouth of the Chickapee river. Their 
arrival here was hailed with joy by those 
who were on the ground before them ; and 
henceforward this became the seat of go- 
vernment and the capital of the old colony 
of Connecticut. The Indians w^ere in the 
woods and the wild beast in his lair. In 
this very vicinity there were three power- 
ful sachemdoms ; and in the state, there 
w^ere twenty thousand of these wild sons 
of the forest. The most powerful of these 
were the Pequods, inhabiting the country 
around New London and Stonington.— 
These viewed the infant settlements on 
the river with a jealous eye, and determin- 
ed upon their destruction. They waylaid 
the white man in his path through the 



28 CENTENNIAL 

woods. They seized upon him while at 
work in the field. They cut him down 
with their tomahawks at the door of his 
own house. The question was to be set- 
tled whether our fathers should abandon 
the country or meet and conquer this terri- 
ble foe. They determined on the latter. 
On the first of May, just eighteen months 
after the settlement was begun, and when 
there were only eight hundred souls in the 
colony, the Court met and resolved upon 
an offensive war against the Pequods. 
On the tenth, ninety men were drafted and 
ready for the expedition. Embarked on 
board three little floats that were to con- 
vey them down the river, they received the 
exhortation and the blessing of their vene- 
rated pastor, Mr. Hooker. '' Your cause," 
said he, " is the cause of heaven ; the ene- 
my have blasphemed your God and slain 
his servants ; you are only the ministers of 
his justice. March then with Christian 
courage in the strength of the Lord ; march 
with faith in hi^ divine promises ; and soon 
your swords shall find your enemies, soon 



ADDRESS. 29 

they shall fall like leaves of the forest un- 
der your feet." So it proved. 

Mr. Stone went as chaplain. On the fif- 
teenth they were at the mouth of the river, 
whence they sent back twenty of their 
number to guard their own defenceless 
homes. On the morning of the 28th, the 
little army, consisting of seventy-seven En- 
glishmen and a party of Narragansett and 
Mohegan Indians, was before the fort of 
the Pequods at Mistic. The day was near 
dawning. A dog bays the alarm. It is too 
late. The Englishmen's musketry and 
broad-swords are upon them, and their last 
hour has come. The brave Capt. Mason, 
with a party of his equally brave men, 
rushes in at the east end of the fort and 
carries the battle into the huts of the sava- 
ges, just roused from sleep. The conflict 
is terrible, and, for a moment, the victory 
hangs in suspense ; till Mason, seizing a 
fire-brand, cries, " we must burn them," and 
throws it among the mats of their cabins. 
Instantly they are in flames. The assail- 
ants retire and surround the fort, and the 
3# 



30 CENTENNIAL 

fire finishes the work. In one short hour, 
the battle is over ; six hundred Indians are 
vslain and the power of the most formidable 
foe of the English is annihilated. Our men 
left the scene of action just as the sun 
had risen ; embarked on board their ves- 
sels, which, just at that crisis, entered the 
Pequod harbor to receive them, and in 
three days were at their homes with only 
two of their number killed^ and about twen- 
ty wounded. 

Our country had not so much at stake 
in the war of the revolution, as was risked 
by our fathers in this single battle w ith the 
Pequods. Had this little army been de- 
feated, all had been lost. The warwhoop 
would immediately have been heard at the 
doors of their houses and their wives and 
children had fallen beneath the tomahawk 
and scalping knife. 

After the destruction of the Pequods, the 
colonists enjoyed comparative peace for 
nearly forty years, when there was a gen- 
eral rising of the Indians throughout New 
England, with a view to extirpate the En- 



ADDRESvS. 



31 



gllsh from the country. This brought on 
what is usually called Philip's war. It 
was a dark day for the plantations. Their 
very existence was threatened, and the 
whole country was in a state of alarm. 
But while Springfield, and Hadley, and 
Deerfield, and numerous other towns in 
Massachusetts were sacked and burnt, and 
their inhabitants carried away captiv e, it 
is remarkable that the tow^ns and villages 
of Connecticut were preserved from the in- 
cursions of savage warfare. Her brave 
sons, however, were on every field of con- 
flict — at every post of danger, and their 
blood flowed freely in defence of the sister 
colonies.* The result of this war was the 
overthrow of Indian power in New Eng- 
land ; thouofh I find mention made in the 
town records, as late as 1704, of four hous- 
es fortified in this town, two on either side 
of the little river. This, however, was to 
guard the inhabitants against the attack of 
Indians from the North, led on by the 

* Trumbull, 3M. 



32 



CENTENNIAL 



French who were then at war with the En- 
glish, rather than from any fear of the 
tribes residing in this part of the country. 

We lament the fate of the poor Indians, 
and feel a sadness of heart w hen we reflect 
upon their disappearance from this land of 
their fathers. I find no blameable cause 
of this in the conduct of our ancestors. 
They came here not to oppress the natives, 
or to drive them from their lands. They 
came to seek among them peaceable homes 
for themselves and their children. They 
did not adopt the European doctrine that 
the discovery of the country gave the right 
of possession ; and though the patents 
granted by the crown of England professed 
to give them absolute right of territory, 
they never assumed to act on that right. 
On the contrary, they uniformly acknowl- 
edged the natives to be the rightful owners 
of the soil ; and with the exception of 
parts of the Pequod country, which was 
obtained by conquest, there is the fullest 
evidence that the lands of Connecticut, as 
well as of the other colonies, were obtain- 



ADDRESS. 33 

ed by liiir purchase of tlie natives.* This 
same Suckiang', where our lot is cast, was 
twice purchased ; once of Sunckquasson, 
the Sachem, in 1636, and again of the In- 
dians in 1670 ; the evidence of the first 
purchase being thought imperfect.! 

In settling among the natives of the land, 
our fathers had a sincere desire to do them 
good, especially to extend to them the bles- 
sings of the gospel. This was one great ob- 
ject they hoped to accomplish in coming to 
" these ends of the earth :" and they labor- 
ed to attain it with commendable zeal. 
Laws were frequently enacted to defend 
the Indians against fraud, oppression and 
violence. For many years, a considerable 
part of the business of the commissioners 
of the united colonies of New England, was 
to consult for the welfare of the natives, 
and adopt measures to propagate Christian- 



• D wight's Travels, vol. I. 167. Trumbull's Hist, passim, 
t Mass, Hist. Coll, vol. Ill 6. 



34 CENTENNIAL 

ity among them.* The mmisters of Con- 
necticut were often desired and directed, 
by the General Court, to go among them 
and instruct them in the knowledge of God 
and religion. In this town, Eliot, the fam- 
ed Apostle of the Indians, preached to the 
Podunk tribe, who had been specially in- 
vited to hear his instructions. But his ef- 
forts were in vain. And so, to a lamented 
extent, were the efforts made by others in 
behalf of these ill-fated cliildren of the for- 
est. A scattered few appear to have be- 
come Christians, and were united with the 
different churches in the colony. But not 
one Indian church was ever gathered, by 
the English ministers, in this State. t The 
efforts made in other parts of New Eng- 
land to christianize them were attended 
with greater success ; and several flour- 
ishing churches were formed under the 
ministry of Eliot and Mayhew, and their 

* 1 Hutch. Hist. 120. t Tmmbull. vo. 1. 468—1). 



ADDRESS. 35 

successors in the divine work of preaching 
the gospel to the natives.^ 

But they are gone. They seem to have 
w^asted away before an unseen but invincible 
destiny. A few years before the arrival 
of our ancestors in the country, nineteen 
twentieths of the Indians on the shores of 
Massachusetts had been swept away by 
war and pestilence.! The work of ex- 
tinction commenced then ; and it has been 
going on ever since. Only a few remnants 
of scattered and fast wasting tribes remain 
on this side of the Mississippi. The hand 
of power is pressing them to pass its wa- 
ters ; and when passed, they shall never re- 
turn. They may find a temporary resting 
place in the territory provided for them on 
the other side of the 'Tather of waters." 
The tide of white population is sweeping 
on towards them, soon it will reach and 



* The aggregate number of praying Indians in Massachusetts, 
in 1674, was estimated at 3G00. Morton's JNew-England Me- 
morial, p. 409. 

t History of New England by Morse and Parish, p. 18. 



36 CENTENNIAL 

surround them^ and they will be borne away 
to seek other homes in regions still more re- 
mote. And judging from the past, so it 
will continue to be, till that great and, in 
many respects, noble and generous people, 
who once owned and inhabited these wide 
spread territories, shall find no home, but 
beneath the soil that embosoms the dust 
and the bones of their ancestors. We may 
weep over their fate; we cannot refrain 
from doing so; but it seems inevitable. 
* Our fathers did not desire the evil days, 
did not precipitate them.' Let us do what 
we can to extend to the remnants of the 
race the blessings of the gospel, and strive 
to cheer their gloomy way with its heav- 
enly light, while any of them shall remain 
sojourners with us in this world of hope. 

Soon after the close of the Pequod war, 
a proposal was made, for a union of the four 
colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Con- 
necticut and New Haven. The proposal 
originated with Massachusetts. But Con- 
necticut, '^ offended because some preemi- 
nence was therein vielded to the Bay 



ADDRESS. 37 

state,'^ refused at first, to come into the 
measure, except on condition, that each 
colony should have a negative on the pro- 
ceedings of the confederacy. This would 
have been to defeat every valuable purpose 
of the union. But the Dutch, w^ho still 
kept their trading house and fort near the 
little river, were found troublesome neigh- 
bors ; and the Dutch at Manhadoes, showed 
a disposition to invade the rights of the colo- 
nies. Connecticut was therefore induced to 
renew the^negotiation ; and in 1639, Hooker 
and Haynes spent several weeks in Boston 
in attempting to carry the proposed union 
into effect. It was not however accom- 
plished till 1643. The New England colo- 
nies were then united into a confederacy 
and for mutual safety and defence, ^'became 
as one ''* It was an event of great im- 
portance. It taught the colonies that 
union is strength. It preserved them in 
peace during the civil wars in England. It 
made their power to be respected by the 



'Bancroft's Hist, of United States, 151 — 5. 
4 



38 CENTENNIAL 

Indian tribes, and also by the Dutcli and 
French on their borders. It served at the 
same time as the precedent and model of 
the confederacy of the states at the period 
of the revolution. In a word^ it gave con- 
sistency and vigor to the grand, seminal 
idea of independence Avhich was in fact, 
coeval with the very existence of the colo- 
nies; which did grow with their growth 
and strengthen with their strength, till it 
was proclaimed and asserted in the face 
of the nation and of the world, on the 4th 
of July, 1776. The British Chalmers, in 
his " Political Annals of the Colonies,'^ pub- 
lished 1780, has well remarked, that the 
'' most inattenive observer must perceive 
the exact resemblance which the confede- 
ration of 1643 bears to a similar junction 
of the colonies, more extensive and pow- 
erful in 1775. The principles upon which 
each was established, he says, were al- 
together those of independency, involving a 
system of absolute sovereignty and leading 
directly to what it was not policy for the 



ADDRESS. 39 

principal agents at that period to avow."* 
The confederacy continued nearly half a 
century, and ceased with the general abro- 
gation of the charters of the New England 
colonies by James the Second. 

In tracing the early history of the colo- 
nies of New England, it is interesting to 
notice, how each began its existence as a 
regularly organized community, with an es- 
tablished government and laws adapted to 
its condition. The first day that rose on 
the pilgrims of Plymouth, after their land- 
ing,beheld them '' a civil body politic," with 
the elements of their social system clearly 
defined and fully established. The same is 
true of the founders of Connecticut. The 
powers of government were at first exer- 
cised by them under a commission, grant- 
ed by the General Court of Massachusetts. 
This continued only a year, when the com- 
mission expired by its own limitation, and 
the government reverted to the people. 
For two or three years the free planters 

« Book I, Chap. 8, Page 177—8. 



^0 CENTENNIAL 

of the three towns of Winds^or, Hart ford 
and Wethersfield^ though without char- 
ter and without constitution, were accus- 
tomed to meet in this place, to choose 
their officers of gorernment and transact 
the general concerns of the colony, very 
much in the form of a pure democracy, — 
a fact strikingly illustrative of the steady 
habits of the people and their firm attach- 
ment to virtue and order.^ 

In 1639 a constitution of government 
was adopted by the associated freemen of 
the colony. It was an instrument formed 
in the spirit of the purest and most enlight- 
ened liberty. " All the public authorities 
rested upon the basis of annual elections, 
exercised by ballot, by the whole body of 
the freemen."' It recognized no exclusive 
privileges ; it established no hereditary dif- 
ferences of rank ; it acknowledged no de- 
pendence on the mother country. It made 
Connecticut in form and in fact, a free, in- 
dependent commonwealth, claiming and 

* Note E. 



ADDRESS. 41 

exercising all the rights of sovereignty ; 
and to shew how deeply, even then, the 
minds of the colonists were imbued with 
the spirit of independence, it is only neces- 
ary to state, that, up to the time of obtain- 
ing the charter, in 1662, there is not to be 
found, in the records of the colony, the 
slightest recognition of the jurisdiction of 
the Crown of England, 

The men who formed this constitution de- 
serve to be had in everlasting remembrance. 
They were not ignorant, or rash, or timid 
men. They were Ludlow, and Haynes, and 
Wolcott, and Hopkins and Hooker, and oth- 
ers of kindred spirit ; — men of clear minds 
and good hearts, — men who in their views of 
civil and religious liberty, were far in ad- 
vance of their age, and who, under the gui- 
dance of a kind providence, introduced a 
form of government which for two centu- 
ries, has secured to the people of this state, 
a measure of liberty, of peace, of order 
and happiness, not surpassed by any other 
people on earth. I say emphatically /or 

fico centuries. For the charter, obtained 

4* 



42 CENTENNIAL 

from Charles II. in 1662, did little more 
than assume and ratify the constitution of 
1639. It left its great principles unaltered ; 
and Connecticut was still a complete re- 
public in every thing but the name.* 
The constitution adopted in 1818 is alto- 
gether conformable in its principles, to the 
compact entered into by our fathers ; differ- 
ing from it chiefly in its adaptedness to 
a more numerous population and to the in- 
terests of a more widely extended and 
complicated state of society. 

The constitution of 1639, then, in its 
main features, always has been, and still 
is, the constitution of the state. It is the 
magna char^ta of the people's liberties ; and 
they have every reason for strong attach- 
ment to it. Nor should it be thought a 
matter of wonder or blame, that when 
fairer means had failed, the good people of 
this town should have had recource to a 
little stratagem, to save the precious instru- 



♦ This charter included the Colony of New-Haven ; but the 
union was not effected in form till 1665, Trumbull, Chap. 12. 



ADDRESS. 44 

iiieutj which had secured to them so many 
privileges; from the grasp of the king's gov- 
ernor, Sir Edmund Andross^ who in 1687^ 
vvas sent over with authority, to vacate all 
the charters of the New England colonies. 
The tradition is, that Sir Edmund, having 
arrived here, with a guard of sixty men, to 
demand of the assembly, then m session, 
the surrender of the charter, it was found 
convenient to prolong the debate, respect- 
ing the matter, till the evening; when, 
suddenly, the lights were extinguished, and 
a captain Wadsworth seizing the charter, 
as it lay on the table, conveyed it to a 
place of safe-keeping, in the hollow^ of an 
oak, on Wyllys' hill. Let that tree stand, 
and still bear the honored name of the 
charter oak. It deserves well of posterity 
for concealing the precious deposit. It 
is a venerable relic of the olden time. 
While it remains, we shall seem to stand 
nearer to the age of our fathers. At least, 
one monument will remain, to remind us 
of the care of our ancestors to preserve 



44 CENTENNIAL 

for their descendants the great deed of their 
civil and religious liberties. 

In less than two years. Sir Edmund, with 
about fifty of his associates was seized in 
Boston and placed in confinement : and the 
good people of Connecticut, not caring to 
submit to the gov^ernment of a delinquent 
in prison, the charter was forth coming 
from its safe retreat; and the chartered 
government, neA^er having been formally 
surrendered, w^as resumed and all its func- 
tions re-established. * 

When we reflect upon the innumerable 
civil and religious blessings, secured to the 
people of this state, by the free and happy 
form of government adopted by our fore- 
fathers, and which, in all its essential fea- 
tures, has been continued to the present 
day, we can scarcely revolve with patience 
the proposal of lord Say and Sele and lord 
Brooke, with others of their fraternity, to 
transport themselves to the colony and 
here establish an order of nobility and a 

* Trumbull, p. 373. Dwight's travels, Vol. I. p. 150. 



ADDRESS'. 45 

hereditary magistracy. Mucli less can we 
endure the design of Archbishop Laud to 
erect an established church in the country 
and incorporate it, indissolubly,with the ci- 
vil government of the state.^ Had such a 
thing been, we do not say, that we 
should this day have been a dependent col- 
ony of a foreign power, but certainly our 
institutions of government, our laws, our 
religion, and all the intercourse and habits; 
of society would have been wholly unlike 
Avhat they now are ; and the difference, we 
cannot doubt, would have been to the dis- 
advantage ; if not the loss, of all that we 
now hold most dear. 

Another subject claiming our grateful 
notice on this occasion, is the early and 
benevolent care of our fathers to establish 
common schools and higher seminaries of 
learning. They were republicans in prin- 
ciple ; and their great object in coming here 
was to secure the enjoyment of religious 
liberty under the auspices of a free corn- 
Note F. 



46 CENTENNIAL 

moiiwealtli. Persuaded that the only basis 
on which a republic can stand is the gene- 
ral intelligence and virtue of the people, 
they early made provision for common 
school education and the religious instruc- 
tion of the community. In the code of 
laws established in 1650, it was ordered 
that every town of fifty families should 
maintain a school in which children should 
be taught to read and write ; and every 
town of one hundred families should set up 
a grammar school, " the masters whereof 
should be able to fit youths for the univer- 
sity."* 

But previous to this, probably, indeed, 
from the beginning, the system of common 
school education was in operation in this 
town, and it is presumed also in the other 

* The preamble to this law is memorable. " It being one chief 
object of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge 
of the scriptures, as in former times keeping them in an unknown 
tongue, so in tliese latter timeSy4jy persuading them from the use 
of tongues, so that at least, the true sense of the original might be 
clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers ; and that 
learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers in 
church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, it is 
ordered," &<". 



ADDRESS. 4/ 

towns of the colony. In the town records 
of 1643, I find the appointment of a Mr. 
Andrews to teach the children in the 
school, with a salary allowed him of six- 
teen pcimds a year.* And repeatedly, at 
subsequent periods, measures were adopt- 
ed to enlarge the accommodations and in- 
crease the means of instructing the young 
in the elements of useful knowledge. 

But the views of our ancestors were not 
confined to the establishment of primary 
schools. Their thoughts took a wider 
range ; and at a very early period a propo- 
sal was made to establish a college in each 
of the colonies of Connecticut and New^ 
Haven ; but it was not then carried into 
effect under a persuasion, a just one, no 
doubt, that Harvard college, already estab- 
lished at Cambridge, was fully adequate to 



♦Since the delivery of the Address, the author has found an 
earlier record in relation to schools. 

Dec. 6, 1642. " It is agreed that thirty pounds a year shall be 
settled upon the school by the town." 

In 1648, forty pounds were appropriated to building a school 
house, 

1660. " Voted, That Mr. Wyliys and Mr. Stone be a com- 
mittee to consider what way may be best for the endowing a free 
school, ynd return their judgment nt some town meeting." 



48 centena;ial 

the wants of the population of the whole 
of New England at that time.^ For sev- 
eral years therefore, Connecticut and New 
Haven were accustomed to send their sons 
to be educated at Harvard, and the contri- 
butions of both colonies were liberally be- 
stowed for the support of that infant insti- 
tution. And once at least, by recommen- 
dation of the commissioners, every family 
in each of the colonies, gave for the support 
of scholars at Cambridge, twelve pence, 
or a peck of corn, or its value in genu- 
ine, unadulterated wampumpeag; wdiile the 



* In lf336, six years after the arrival of Wintiirop, the General 
Court of Massachusetts voted the sum of four hundred pounds — 
equal to a year's rate of the whole colony — for the ei'ection of a 
public school at Cambridge. This laid the foundation of Har- 
vard College, ■which received its present name — in honor of John 
Harvard, its most liberal early benefactor, and was duly incorpo- 
rated two years after. A passage in " New England's first fruits," 
published in lGi2, strikingly illustrates the interest felt by our an- 
cestors in literary institutions. " After God had carried us safe 
to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided ne- 
cessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's 
worship, and settled the civil government ; one of the next things 
we longed for and looked after, was to advance learning and per- 
petuate it to posterity ; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry 
to the churches, when our present ministry shall be in the dust." 



ADDRESS. 49 

magistrates and wealthier men were pro- 
fuse in their liberality,^ — a very good pre- 
cedent, by the way, and would not be a bad 
substitute for modern education societies. 

Of so great importance was education 
esteemed at that day, that one of the early 
governors of Connecticut, Edward Hop- 
kins, dying in England, bequeathed the 
greater part of his estate, in this country, 
to give '' encouragement, in these foreign 
plantations, for the breeding up of hopeful 
youths, in a way of learning, both at the 
grammar school and college, for the public 
service of the country, hi future times."! 
This charity laid tlie foundation of the 
grammar school in this city ; and also of 
the one at New Haven and of another at 
Hadley. 

In 1698 the plan of establishing a col- 
lege in this state was revived, and two 
years after, by a simple, but most appro- 
priate ceremony, the institution was found- 



♦ Bancroft's Hist. 498. Code of laws, 1650. 
+ TrumlKiir.s Hist. 2.33. 

5 



50 CENTENNIAL 

ed. Ten of the principal ministers of the 
colony, having met for the purpose, each 
one brought a number of folios in his 
arms, and placing them on a table, said, — 
" I give these books for the founding of a 
college in this colony."* The learning 
contained in these ponderous tomes might 
not have been of much value ; but the spir- 
it which presented the offering was of hea- 
venly origin, and may be regarded as a 
pledge, that the smiles of heaven shall al- 
ways rest upon an institution, thus founded 
in piety and prayer. 

Of Yale College, no true son of Con- 
necticut can think without pleasure, or 
speak without grateful emotion. It is an 
honor and a blessing to the state of which 
she may well be proud. It has from 
the beginning enjoyed, in an eminent de- 
gree, the favor of God and the confidence 
and prayers of the intelligent and the good; 
and never, perhaps, more than at the pres- 
ent time. Commencing with a single stu- 



About forty folios were contributed in this manner. 



ADDRESS. 51 

dent, and having no more for the first six 
months, she now nuuibers four hundred 
and thirteen among her undergraduates. 
She has sent forth from her walls, near 
five thousand sons, crow ned with academic 
honors, who have been dispersed over eve- 
ry part of our country, and have shone 
with distinguished lustre, in the various de- 
partments of usefulness and honor which 
they have been called to fill. '^ She still 
stands erect in the midst of her grateful 
offspring," unenvious of the rising reputa- 
tion of younger institutions, and cheering 
on, by her own bright example, every gen- 
erous competitor in the w ide and common 
field of science. 

To our ancestors then we owe a debt 
of gratitude which we can never repay, for 
their wise and pious care in providing for 
the interests of education. It is owing to 
this, that the people of this State, in every 
period of their history, have been so distin- 
guished for their intelligence, their enter- 
prize, their sound morals, and their love of 
order and religion. May the time never 



52 CENTENNIAL 

come, when the sons of Coiniectieut, into 
whatever part of the world wandering, on 
returning home, shall not be greeted from 
the distant hills and smiling valleys of their 
native State, by the church-spire, and the 
village school house standing by its side ; 
the one pointing the soul to heaven, and 
the other guiding into the path that lead- 
eth thither. =^ 

In bestowing a passing tliought, — time 
will allow no more, — upon the religion of 
our ancestors, the remark will be admitted, 
that religion was the grand pervading ele- 
ment of their character, — the primary, im- 
pelling motive of their conduct. They 
were christians ; they Avere puritans ; chris- 
tians, devoted to the principles and doc- 
trines of the reformation ; puritans, despis- 
ed and persecuted by the wicked and the 
profligate in their day ; but- they were the 
tried friends and faithful defenders of civil 
and religious freedom ; the preservers of it 
in England and the propagators of it in this 

* Note G. 



ADDRESS. i).J 

country and the world. ^ They feared and 
loved God ; they believed and loved his 
truth, his day and ordinances ; and hung* 
all their hopes of civil and religious pros- 
perity upon the efficacy of his word, and 
the influences of his spirit. '^ We all," it is 
said in the articles of confederation enter- 
ed into in 1643, " we all came into these 
parts of America to enjoy the liberties of 
the gospel in purity and peace." It has been 
truly remarked that '' he who made religion 
as twelve and the world as thirteen, had 
not the spirit of a true New Enoland man." 
The sacred regard of our fathers for the 
Sabbath, — manifest in every part of their 
history, — is strikingly illustrated by one 
fact ; — The Sabbath before the battle with 
the Pequods, and while the little army was 
just on the borders of the enemy's territory, 
they rested all day by their arms, and mov- 
ed not towards the field of conflict till Mon- 
day came. To show their high esteem of 

*The precious spark of liberty was kindled and preserved by 
the Puritans ; and it was to tliis sect, whose principles appear so 
frivolous, and habits so ridiculous, that the English owe the 
whole freedom of their constitution. Hume's Eng. vol. 5. 183 — 
469, 5* 



54 CENTENNIAL 

religious institutions, and how important 
they considered them to the welfare of the 
community, it is only necessary to state^ 
that the six first towns in Connecticut and 
New Haven enjoyed the constant labors of 
ten able ministers ; and that at the time of 
the union in 1665, when there w^ere only 
, about eight or nine thousand inhabitants 
in the colony, there Avas, on an average^ 
one minister to every eighty-five families^ 
or one to about four hundred and thirty 
souls. ^ So vital was religion and learning 
deemed to the best interests of the people^ 
that the church and the school house rose 
simultaneously with their own humble 
dwellings ; and it was considered a ' bar- 
barism, not to be endured,' that any should 
so far neglect their children and domestics 
as not to have them taught the princi- 
ples of the Bible and the elements of divine 
knowledge, in some approved catechism. 

Religion was, indeed, the great principle 
by which the founders of this State and of 
New England were actuated in the whole 



Trumbull, 282. 



ADDRESS; 53 

of their great enterprize. It directed them 
In the organization of their government ; in 
the making of their laws ; in tlie regulation 
Of their families ; in their social and do^ 
Inestic habits ; in the election of their ru- 
lers, and in their public deliberations and 

measures. 

It may be admitted, that their reli- 
gion had in it, somewhat too much of 
the severe and the rigid ; but it was based 
on principle; it was inwrought into the 
deepest feelings of the soul, and was most 
operative and fruitful. It animated them 
in labors ; it cheered them in darkness ; it 
supported them in trials ; it nerved their 
arm in danger ; gladdened their hopes in 
all their wearisome pilgrimage on earth, 
and shed over their dying hour, the light 
and the smiles of heaven. In a w^ord, it 
was religion, the religion of the Bible, the 
fear and the love of God, the purest and the 
best principle, that can warm the heart and 
govern the conduct of man, which gave suc- 
cess to their great undertaking; which 
planted these hills and vales with towns 
and villages ; with churches and schools ; 



56 CENTENNIAL 

with an intelligent, virtuous, thriving pop- 
ulation, and is therefore to be regarded as 
the great source of our prosperity; the foun- 
dation of the fair and goodly heritage that 
has come down to us from our fathers. 

It would not be difficult, I am aware, to 
make exceptions to the character an con- 
duct of our ancestors. They were imper- 
fect men; they had their faults ; they com- 
mitted their mistakes ; and what men on 
earth, placed in their circumstances, would 
not have done the same 1 Recollect that 
they had been bred up under an establish- 
ed church, and an arbitrary government ; 
that toleration, was a virtue unknown to 
the age in wliich they lived ; that they 
came here smarting from under the lash of 
ecclesiastical and civil tyranny ; that in lay- 
ing the foundation of a new state of socie- 
ty, they had to make their way amidst in- 
numerable difficulties and hardships, with- 
out precedent and without guide ; and is it 
not wonderful that they accomplished so 
much, with so few mistakes 1 What did 
they accomplish ? They recognized and 
proclaimed the equal rights of men ; they 



ADDRESS. Oi 

established the principles of civil and re- 
ligious freedom ; they introduced the sys- 
tem of free schools for the education of the 
whole people ; they founded churches and 
established the independence of the church- 
es ; they founded academies and colleges ; 
they developed and carried into practice, 
the elements of a great, flourishing, well or- 
ganized republic; and was not this enough? 
What class of men, or what one generation 
ever accomplished more ] 

Our fathers have often been charged 
with the sin of intolerance and persecution. 
But this charge, however, it may lie against 
some of the early colonies in the country, 
has very little force in relation to the foun- 
ders of Connecticut. There was indeed, 
an early law against quakers, but it was 
never enforced ; and church membership 
was never in this colony, made a qualifica- 
tion for civil office. It is true, that provis- 
ion was made for the support of religion 
by law ; and was it not wise to do so, 
while the people were few and scattered, 
and were all, or nearly all, of one denom- 
ination 1 Had it been better for us at the 



58 CENTENNIAL 

present clay, if no such law had existed ? 

We may think that some of the laws en- 
acted by our ancestors, especially those 
that related to capital punishment, were 
oppressive and cruel ; and doubtless, if tried 
by the more enlightened views of the pres- 
ent day, such an opinion is just. And yet 
it Avas certainly doing much to reduce the 
number of crimes punishable with death, 
from one hundred to fourteen. This our 
fathers did ; and it may with truth, be 
said, that scarcely a country in Europe 
has yet made its criminal code so mild as 
that of early New England. 

We smile when we read some of the 
early laws of the colonies, and think them 
ridiculously minute and absurd. It seems 
to us a small business for grave legisla- 
tors to be making laws for the regulation 
of dress, and manners, and eating, and 
drinking, and such like tilings. But even 
here the conduct of our ancestors will not 
suffer by comparison with that of the wise 
men of England at the same period. If 
the pilgrims of Plymoutb had a law which 



ADDRESS. 



59 



limited the greatest width of a lady's gown 
sleeve to half an ell, — a law by the way, 
which one half, if not the best half of crea- 
tion would like to see revived at the pres- 
ent day ; There was about the same peri- 
od a law made by Queen Elizabeth which 
stationed grave^ citizens at the gates of 
London, with scissors, to cut off all the ruffs 
of passengers that exceeded certain legal 
dimensions.^ If there was an early law in 
Connecticut against idlers and tobacco ta- 
kers, which subjected them to indictment 
and punishment before a magistrate ; there 
was another in the reign of Edward 3d, 
which regulated what persons of every de- 
gree should eat, on what days they should 
have sauce on their meat, and of what this 
sauce should be made. The law respect- 
ing tobacco, it may be remarked in passing, 
was a good one. Of that, we need no oth- 
er evidence than the fact, that from ten to 
fifteen millions of dollars are annually ex- 
pended in the United States, in the use of 



*Grahamc's Hist. 1. 308. 



60 CENTEiNKlAL 

this vile article ; to say nothing of the 
filthy habits, and the loss of health, and life 
which is occasioned by it.^ 

After all the exceptions that can be 
made to the regulations of our ancestors^ 
the recently expressed sentiment of a dis- 
tinguished lawyer in this* city is unques- 
tionably correct; '* that no class of men ev- 
er legislated more wisely for themselves," 
and we may add, for posterity, than did the 
founders of Connecticut. In judging of 
their civil and religious institutions, it is 
important that we try them by a right 
standard. It is a remark of the late Chief 
Justice Marshall, that no man can tell be- 
forehand, how a law will operate. It is 
equally true, that no man can tell how a 
law has operated without a knowledge of 
the circumstances in which it was enacted, 
and of the character of the people for 
whose benefit it was intended. 

Now the early settlers of Connecticut, 
and the same is true of the settlers of New 

♦See Fowler's Disquisition on the use of Tobacco. 



ADDRESS. 61 

England, dwelt together, for a considera- 
ble time, as one great family ; of homoge- 
neous character, and of similar principles 
and aims. Their government, therefore, 
naturally assumed very much of the patri- 
archal character. The father of a family 
says to his children, you must not break the 
Sabbath ; you must attend public worship ; 
you must show respect to your superiors ; 
you must not keep bad company ; you must 
not swear ; you must not drink ; you must 
not be extravagant in dress. The early 
legislation of Connecticut said the same, 
and it said wisely. The powers of magis- 
tracy were committed by the people to the 
eldest and wisest of the people ; and by 
common consent they extended their su- 
pervision over the morals and manners of 
the community, and over the every day ac- 
tions and habits of individuals, with a de- 
gree of particularity and strictness, which, 
though well adapted to the circumstances 
of the times, would be altogether inappro- 
priate to the situation of a widely extend- 
ed and populous state. 
6 



62 CENTENNIAL 

But I feel that vindication is unnecessa- 
ry. Our venerated fathers need it not. A 
thousand hearts, now before me, beating 
high, with grateful joy of such an an- 
cestry, declare they need it not. Their 
memorial is before us. It is in their works. 
These are monuments more enduring than 
brass or marble. They shall remain to tell 
to generations to come the virtues and the 
deeds of our ancestors, and millions yet un 
born shall rise up and call them blessed. 

While we pay this tribute to the memo- 
ry of our fathers, let us be just to the vir- 
tues of their descendants. I am not dis- 
posed to inquire " what is the cause that 
the former days were better than these ;" 
for I do not think they were. The first 
colonists and their immediate successors 
were, as a class, persons of rare excellence ; 
and have not, probably, been surpassed, by 
any subsequent generation, for lofty virtue, 
and consistent, devoted piety. But take 
any point within the last century and a 
half, and a just comparison will leave no 
doubt, that the general state of society is 



ADDRESS. 63 

far in advance of what it then was. There 
is more intelligence ; there is more genu- 
ine refinement of character ; there is a bet- 
ter state of morals and a much more wide- 
ly diffused state of religious feeling and 
principle. The Sabbath is probably not so 
generally observed in this place as it was 
fifty years ago. But there is much less in- 
temperance than there was then, especial- 
ly among the middling and higher classes 
of society. And if fewer people, in pro- 
portion to the population, attend public 
worship, they unquestionably attend with 
vastly greater seriousness and decorum ; re- 
ligion is much more generally a subject of 
thought and attention, and the efforts made 
to diffuse its light and blessings through 
the world, are greater beyond comparison. "^ 
A little more than forty years ago, there 
were but two places of public worship 
within the limits of the city ; now there 
are eleven ; and all of them respectably 
filled on the Sabbath, and in nearly all, 

* Note H. 



64 CENTENNIAL 

the gospel is preached substantially as it 
was held by our fathers. 

Our growth as a city has never been ra- 
pid, but slow and sure. The people still 
retain much of the character of their an- 
cestors, — intelligent, cautious, enterprising; 
not easy of acquaintance nor forward to 
make professions of friendship ; but steady 
in their attachments, and in acts of public 
and private charity, not surpassed by any 
place of equal population in the country. 

At the beginning of the last century 
Hartford was a frontier town, — all west 
and north was an unbroken wilderness. 
New England itself was a thinly peopled 
territory, containing only one hundred and 
sixty thousand inhabitants.* Now she has 
full two millions, and is the parent of a 
third part of the whole white population 
in the United 'States ;t and as you travel 
west from this point, you find cities and 



♦ Connecticut contained 17000 inhabitants, 
t Bancroft's Hist. 507. 



ADDRESS. 65 

towns and villages, a thriving and fast 
spreading population, well nigh till you 
reach the rocky mountains. The sons of 
Connecticut, inheriting the spirit of emigra- 
tion from their forefathers, have spread 
themselves abroad into the most distant 
parts of our country ; and it is delightful to 
know that wherever they go, they still love 
and cherish the habits of their native state, 
and mark, to the traveller, the place of 
their residence, by the well cultivated farm, 
and the school house, and the church spire, 
rising in the midst of their neat and com- 
pact villages. 

The individual is still living and from 
the force of habit and the love of industry, 
is still found every day at the printer's 
stand, who was employed in publishing 
the first newspaper in this city and the 
third in the state. Now there are twenty 
thousand printed weekly, besides an aver- 
age number of three thousand two hundred 
and twenty-five volumes of books every 



o6 CENTENNIAL 

day ; — making an aggregate of more than 
one million of volumes a year.* 

It is within the memory of the same in- 
dividual and of several other aged persons 
present, that, sallying forth from his undis- 
turbed forests on the north, a bear came 
down through our streets, to the no small 
terror of the inhabitants, as if to see wheth- 
er he might not contest with them the 
right of possession and regain a foothold in 
this his ancient domain. 

As indicating the increase of business in 
the city, two or three facts may be men- 
tioned. In 1792, forty-three years ago, the 
first bank was established in this city. 
Now there are six, with an aggregate ca- 
pital of near four millions of dollars. 

In 1776, the year of the declaration of 
our independence, the receipts at our post 
office were one hundred and thirty-five dol- 
lars. The last year, ending Sept. 30th, 
they were fourteen thousand six hundred 
ninety-one dollars seventy-five cents. The 

* Note I 



ADDRESS. 67 

amount has somewhat more than doubled 
within the last ten years. 

These things show the rapid progress of 
society around us and the great changes 
that have occurred in the place of our ha- 
bitation in the short period of a single hu- 
man life. The progress of change is still 
going on, w4th a constantly increasing rapi- 
dity. What new scenes of interest may 
arise to spread themselves around the city 
of our abode, or affect the destinies of our 
common country, before another day like 
this shall return, is known only to the all- 
comprehending vision of God. 

One thing is certain ; when that day 
shall dawn we shall not be here. Long ere 
that morning shall spread its light over 
these goodly scenes, and summon the 
people, who shall then be, to remember 
the God of their fathers, we shall be gath- 
ered to the great congregation of the dead, 
and lie sleeping beneath the clods of the 
valley. We have here, wath united and 
grateful hearts, paid our humble tribute to 
the memory of our revered ancestors ; the 



68 CENTENNIAL 

founders of our city and state. We wish 
to leave it on record for our children and 
those who shall come after us, that we ap- 
preciate the virtues, venerate the princi- 
ples, cherish the religion, and glory in the 
institutions of our forefathers ; and would 
fain bequeath the great inheritance we 
have received from them to those who 
shall live here when we are gone. And 
now, * standing at this interesting hour on 
the line that separates the ages that arc past, 
from those which are to come,' were it per- 
mitted us to offer one prayer which shouki 
reach the ear of the Lord of hosts, could 
one be expressed, fraught with greater 
blessings to posterity than that Connecticut, 
that New England^ might be kept true to 
the spi7^it^ to the principles^ to the institutions 
of our dear and venerated ancestors 1 Let 
this be, and New England is safe, is free, 
is happy. It was once asked by a distin- 
guished individual of another, how he should 
act in a particular case. The reply was, 
act with New England ; for, so far as I 
have observed, God has alwa\rs favored 



ADDRESS. 69 

that land. It is even so. Let New Enff- 
land then remain true to the spirit, the 
principles, the institutions of our fathers, 
and come what may on other parts of the 
land, New England will be safe, be free, 
be happy, — still teaching the nation and 
the world the great lesson, which she has 
taught from the beginning, that intelligence^ 
virtue^ religion^ are the essential pillars of a 
good government^ — the foundation of a fre$ 
and happy republic. 



NOTES 



Note A. p. 11. Though the exact date is not 
given, there does not appear to be much difficulty 
in ascertaining the time of the arrival of the first 
settlers. Winthrop states that, on the 15th of Octo- 
ber, about sixty men, v^^omen, and little children, 
w^ent by land towards Connecticut with their cows, 
horses, and swine, and after a tedious and difficult 
journey, arrived safe there. (1 Winthrop, p. 171.) 
Many historians state that they w^ere fourteen days 
on their way. This would bring them here on the 
39th of October. Adding eleven days for the 
change from old to new style, the true time of their 
arrival is ascertained to be on the 9th of Novem- 
ber. Holmes, in his "Amxerican Annals," says 
they commenced their journey on the 20th of Oct. 
But as no reason is offered for this departure from 
Winthrop, it is presumed that it is a mistake. 



72 NOTES. 

Note B. p. 16. It is difficult to speak ol' the 
persecutions endured by our ancestors in their na^ 
tive land without seeming to cast reproach upon a 
respected and fast risings denomination of Christ- 
ians. The author hopes that nothing which he has 
-saidj will be interpreted as intending the least re- 
proach of tliat kind. He simply states an histori- 
cal fact. The intolerance and persecutions of for- 
mer times are equally disapproved, and regreted 
by all Christians of the present day, and should 
never be mentioned as exclusively the sin of any 
one sect. They were the common errors of the 
age — errors; unliappily, from which even the fa- 
thers of New England, notwithstanding all their 
sufferings from this source, were not wholly ex- 
empted. 

Note C. p. 22 By a law of Massachusetts, as 
early as 1641, it was ordered that no man should 
set his dwelling house " above the diatance of half 
a mile, or a mile at fartherest. from the meeting 
house of the congregation. (Hutchison's State 
papers, 168.) The second article of the agree- 
ment entered into by the first settlers of Spring- 
field, May, 1636, limits the number of families to 
forty, or at most fifty. It appears from Mather's 



NOTES. ^3 

Lives of Cotton and Hooker, that these men were 
knit together in the firmest bonds of christian 
friendship and cordial esteem. And yet these men 
who forsook houses, hinds and country, for the 
sake of the gospel, are described by Dr. Robert- 
son " as rival competitors in the contest for fame 
and power." This is the only light in which many 
eminent, and even reverend writers, are capable of 
regarding the labors of the patriot, the saint aud 
ihe sage. 

Note D. p. 25. The emigrants from Dorches- 
ter settled at Mattaneaug, now Windsor, — those 
from Newtown or Cambridge, at Suckiang, now 
Hartford, — and those from Watertown, at Pauqm- 
aug, now Wethersfield. These three towns at first 
bore the names of the towns from which their re- 
spective settlers removed ; but within the first year 
after settlement, they received the names which 
they now bear. It appears to have entered into 
the original design of the settlers of Hartford to 
^^ stretch one of the wings of their plantation over 
what is now Wethersfield ;" but in this, they were 
defeated ; — the " settlers of that town being too 
quick for them, and seized it for their ov^^n planta- 
tion ;" and as in such sort of possessions the pre- 
mier seisin is the best title, they could not be dispos- 
sessed by the pretensions of their neighbors." — 

Hubbard's Hist, of New England, vol. 2 : 307, 

7 



74 NOTES. 

Wethersfield is the oldest town in the State ; and 
was acknowledged to be so, in the code of 1650. 
It appears that a few huts were erected there in 
1634, in which a small number of individuals made 
shift to wdnter. Trumbull, 59. 

Note E. p. 40. The whole body of freemen 
were accustomed to meet annually in this city, on 
the day of election, to choose their governor, ma- 
gistrates and civil officers, appointed by charter, 
until 1670. 

Note F. p. 45. As early as April, 1635, a com- 
mission was issued for the government of the plan- 
tations, " granting absolute power to the Arclibish- 
op of Canterbury and to others, to make laws and 
constitutions, concerning either their state public, 
or the utility of individuals, and for the relief of the 
clergy, to consign convenient maintenance unto 
them by tithes and oblations, and other profits, ac- 
cording to their discretion ; and they were empow- 
ered to inflict punishment by imprisonment, or by 
loss of life and members." 

This measure had, for some time, been anticipa- 
ted by the people of Massachusetts ; and to pre- 
vent its influence in the overthrow, both of their ci- 
vil and religious freedom, was, no doubt, one of 
their principal motives in making church member- 
ship a qualification for the enjoyment of the rights 
of freemen. By this regulation they excluded from 



NOTES. 75 

all civil influence the friends of the hierarchy ; nor 
does it appear how, by any other measure, they 
could resist the odious principles contained in the 
commission above referred to. They have often 
been charged with bigotry for excluding from the 
elective franchise and from office, all but church 
members ; but it was a necessary measure of self- 
defence ; nor was the adoption of it an act of bigo- 
tr}^, unless it was bigotry to defend themselves in 
the enjoyment of rights, to possess which, they 
left country and home, and encountered all the tri- 
als and hardships incident to a settlement in this 
western wilderness. Nor was it possible for them 
to apply their disqualification directly and only to 
the adherents of the English hierarchy. They 
were compelled, if adopted at all, to make it gener^ 
al, and to acquiesce in the charge of bigotry, in or- 
der to give efficacy to their policy. See this point 
ably argued in President Q,uincy's Centennial Ad- 
dress, 25 and 63. 

Note G. p. 52. In the spirit inherited from our 
ancestors, was laid the foundation of tlie present 
School Fund of Connecticut, which has gradually 
increased until it now amounts to more than two 
millions of dollars. 

Connecticut, in her cession of Western lands to 
the United States, made September 14th, 1786, 
reserved a tract extending one hundred and twenty 



76 NOTES. 

miles westward of the Western boundary of Penn- 
sylvania, and from the 41st to 42d deg. and 2 min. 
North latitude. By an act of the Legislature, pass- 
ed October 1786^ provision was made for dividing 
this tract into townships and otFeringthem for sale 
under the authority of the State. In October 1793, 
the avails of these lands were set apart as a per- 
petual fund, the interest of which was to be apphed 
for the support of the Gospel and Common Schools, 
In May 1795, this appropriation was so far modi- 
fied as to limit its benefits to Common Schools- 

Note H. p. 63. In respect to some of the points 
mentioned in the text, there will doubtless be a 
difference of opinion. The author has expressed 
^e views, which after much inquiry of the aged, 
and a considerable examination of ancient docu- 
ments, appear to him most agreeable to truth. 

Let it be admitted, that irreligion and vice are 
more open and bold and active than they formerly 
were. It must also be admitted that viiHue and re- 
ligion are more decided, energetic and fruitful. 
Every thing is free and voluntary at the present 
day. Restraints are taken off, and all in respect 
to morals and religion, are left to walk in the ways 
of their hearts and in the sight of their eyes. The 
consequence is, society is divided into two great 
classes, — those who are moral and religious froni 
principle, and those who resist the control of priik- 



NOTEh\ 77 

ciple and live and act in disregard of God and du- 
ty. And our judgment in respect to the present 
state of society, compared with what it was fifty 
years ago, will vary according as we direct our 
view to one or the other of these classes. Evil 
abounds ; it is, in some respects, peculiarl}^ rife 
and virulent. Bui good also abounds^ and is, I be- 
lieve, yearly gaining ground and rising to a higher 
tone of enterprise and action. If it be not so, 
of what use is the immense increase of religious 
books, and of religious reading, which distinguishes 
our day, and of the multiplied eflforts to diffuse the 
influence of truth and piety among all classes of the 
community, and through the world ? 

Note I. p. 66. The first newspaper published in 
Connecticut was the Connecticut Gazette, at New 
Haven, Jan. 1, 1755, by James Parker. This was 
continued but a short period. Tlie second, called the 
New London (or Connecticut) Gazette, was first 
published at New London, by Timothy Green, in 
1758. The third, is the Connecticut Courant, 
first published at Hartford, by Thomas Green, in 
1674.— Mass. Hist. Coll. vol. 6 : 76. 

The first printing press erected in New England^ 
was set up in Cambridge 1689. The first thing 
which was printed was the freeman's oath ; the 
next was an Almanac made for New England ; the. 
next was the Psalms newly turned into metre. 



/O NOTES. 

The last thing which issued from this press, was 
the second edition of Eliot's Indian Bible, in 1685. 
Some reliques of this press, it is said, were in use 
a few years since, in the printing office at Windsor, 
Vermont. Mass. Hist. Coll. vol. 7 : 19. 



The following is a list of the names of all per- 
sons holding land in Hartford, in February 1639. 
At that time it appears that all the lands of the in- 
habitants were recorded in a book, and we have 
every reason to suppose this to be a perfect list. 
The ancient orthography is retained. 
John Hayes 
Edward Hopkins 
George Willes 
\ Thomas Wells 
\ John Webster 
William Why tinge 
William Goodwins; 
William Westwood 
Thomas Root 
Nicholas Olmstead 
John Mainard 
Nathaniel Barden 
Thomas Upson 
Ralph Keeler 
Richard Webb 



John Crow 
Nicholas Clerk 
William Butler 
Nathaniel Richards 
Thomas Lord, sen. 
Benjamin Munn 
Andrew Warner 
Thomas Scott 
WilUam Pantry 
William Rusco 
John Taylcoatt 
Richard Goodman 
Matthew Marvin 
Timothy Standly 
Edward Stebbins 



NOTES. 



79 



^ John Pratt 
William Parker 
John Bidden 
Robert Day 
Thomas Birchwood 
Richard Lord 
Thomas Standly 
Nicholas Disborow 
William Kelsey 
Matthew Allen 
Nathaniel Ely 



John Brunson 
William Wads worth * 
Stephen Hart>^ 
Zachariah Field 
James Cole 
John Gierke 
John Baysee 
Jeremy Adams 
Thomas Bunce 
John Moodie 
Joseph Eason 



Thomas Spenser, Sergt. John Barnard 
at Armes. John Willcock 



John Purchas 
Robert Wade 
Ozias Goodwing 
Richard Seamor 
William Phillips 
Daniel Garrad 
Benjamin Burr 
Thomas Barns 
John Morris 
John Gennings 
John Warner 
Wilham Heaton 
"^ Thomas Woodford 
William Pratt 
William Lewis 



James Ensine 
John Hopkins • 
Stephen Post 
Thomas Bull 
Francis Andrews 
Andrew Bacon 
\William Hide 
Arthur Smith 
George Graves 
John Olmstead 
Richard Olmsted 
Thomas Bliss, sen. 
Richard Butler 
Wilham Holton 
William Hills 



80 



rsOTES. 



George Hubbard 
Richard Risley 
Giles Smith 

\ Thomas Selden 

^ Richard Lyman 
Jolin White 
Thomas Bhss, jr. 

'^ Thomas Osmer 
John Arnold 
Paul Peck 

-( William Blumfield 
Gregory Witterton 
Joseph Maggott 
Nathaniel Ward 
s* Thomas Hooker 
John Peirce 
William Gibbins 
John Skinner 
Nathaniel Kellogge 
James Olmstead 
Thomas Judd 



William Cornvvell 
James Wakeley 
Richard Church 
Thomas Stanton 
Seth Grant 
Robert Bartlettv 
Edward Elmer 
George Stockin 
Thomas Gridley 
William Westley 
Richard Watts 
John Stone 
Samuel Stone 
William Spencer 
George Steele v^ 
Edward Lay 
John Gullet 
Samuel Wakeman 
Widow Richards 
Mrs. Dorothe Chestef 
Clement Chapling 



Total, 127. 



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